City of San Jose v. Superior Court

California Public Records Act

California Supreme Court

Associate Justice Carol A. Corrigan

Petitioner’s Lawyers: James W. McManis, Christine Peek, Matthew Schechter, Tyler Atkinson, Jennifer H. Murakami (former), McManis Faulkner

Respondent’s Lawyers: Nora V. Frimann, San Jose City Attorney’s Office

“The more citizens know about their government, the more they can learn about it, the better government we have.”

James McManis, McManis Faulkner

The first successful receipt of an email message occurred in 1971 on a U.S. government system known as ARPANET, a precursor of the modern internet. The communications breakthrough came three years after the passage of the California Public Records Act, which made many governmental records available to the public upon request.

It would take decades for email to develop into what it has become today and throughout those years, courts across the state have grappled with the implications of a law that addressed public records in an era of physical paper.

Last year, the state Supreme Court considered a historic case that sought to clarify the act’s purview on email messages sent on private smartphones, technology unimaginable to the legislators of the 1960s.

The case began in 2009, when an activist named Ted Smith wanted to shed light on the financial dealings in downtown San Jose redevelopment efforts spearheaded by the city’s former mayor. After Smith requested disclosure of documents pertaining to the deal, the city refused to disclose email and text messages sent on private accounts used by the mayor, council members and their staff.

Smith, represented by McManis Faulkner, went to court and argued that the texts and emails needed to be disclosed as official public communications. Initially, they were successful. Santa Clara Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg granted summary judgment to Smith. But on appeal, the 6th District Court of Appeal reversed the decision.

The state Supreme Court decided to hear the case and quickly attracted a flood of amicus briefs, half from the American Civil Liberties Union and media organizations supporting Smith, the other half from city and county associations rallying behind San Jose.

Arguing before California’s high court for the first time in his illustrious career, James McManis, a veteran of San Jose trial courts, secured a unanimous reversal.

“If public officials could evade the law simply by clicking into a different email account, or communicating through a personal device, sensitive information could routinely evade public scrutiny,” Justice Carol A. Corrigan wrote in her opinion, published in March 2017. City of San Jose v. Superior Court, 2017 DJDAR 1896.

McManis said that the decision was “better for everybody” — citizens and governmental officials alike.

“The more citizens know about their government, the more they can learn about it, the better government we have,” he said. “[Disclosure] helps to hold officials accountable. If they can do things in secret, they can do things that aren’t in the public interest. But if they know that the doors are wide open and there will be scrutiny, I think they’ll know to behave.”

Smith eventually obtained the information he was seeking, but McManis said that because litigation took so long, public interest in the funding in question had died down.

Nora Frimann, who represented the city before the Supreme Court, said that San Jose — and cities across the state — are learning to comply with the precedent. But she noted that now, specifics of the court’s bright line rule will be shaped on a case-by-case basis in the trial courts.

“The Legislature is the best place to develop policy,” she said, observing that the original 1968 law was passed after a lengthy study conducted by a blue-ribbon commission. “This issue has a lot of wrinkles; we’ll see where it goes.”

— Nicolas Sonnenburg